2008-09 Basketball Expense Efficiency Rankings
by Ben Broman on Aug 30, 2009 6:54 PM EDT
in Basketball
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PrintI saw the 2008/2009 college basketball expense sheet today during my normal lunchtime routine (thank you, message boards) and saw that Maryland was surprisingly low: #67. Yes, the University of Maryland was being outspent by such college basketball stalwarts as Nebraska, New Mexico, Rutgers, TCU, and Penn State. Actually, only 10 BCS (I know it's basketball, but that's the terminology I'm using) outspent Maryland.
Maryland, of course, heavily outperformed some of those programs this year. After all, Indiana and Oregon - both of whom are above Maryland by more than 20 spots - won fewer games combined. I got to wondering how much Maryland spent per win. Turns out, the answer to that question is $165,032. Then the problem was that I had nothing to compare it to, so I didn't know if it was good or bad.
And that got me rolling on this. In about two hours, I figured out how much each BCS (yeah, yeah, I know, live with it) program spent per win (plus a few non-BCS programs, because 1) they spend more than some BCS programs and 2) Excel was hell otherwise). Only regular season and NCAA tournament wins count. The non-BCS programs are Memphis, TCU, UNLV, New Mexico, Creighton, and Xavier.
You can see the entire breakdown in a chart after the jump, or view an easier to read PDF here (PDF probably recommended).
Here's the lazy man's version:
- The most efficient program (least $/win) was Missouri, with a measly $127,899 per win. The rest of the top ten are (in order) Creighton, LSU, Xavier, Pitt, Mississippi State, Purdue, Florida State, Wake Forest, and Villanova. Maryland just missed the top 10, clocking in at 11.
- The least efficient program was Indiana, spending (get ready for this) $1,248,438 per win. That's more than twice what any other program spent per win, and ten times what Missouri spent. Ouch. The rest of the bottom ten is (in order of least efficient to more efficient) Virginia, Arkansas, Oregon, Duke, Georgetown, Kentucky, Colorado, Vanderbilt, and Georgia Tech.
- The ACC (in order) comes in as FSU, Wake, Maryland, UNC, NCSt, Virginia Tech, Clemson, Miami, Boston College, Georgia Tech, Duke, and Virginia.
- Spending a ton of money doesn't guarantee wins. Half of the top ten highest-spending programs missed the NCAA tournament.
- But efficiency does matter. Nine of the ten most efficient teams made the tourney (Creighton), while only one of the bottom ten (Duke) made it.
- Really, though, Duke had no shot to be anywhere near "efficient". To reach the median for efficiency, they would've had to won 55 games. Likewise, some schools (like Oregon State) would've had to be unbelievably bad to be considered heavily inefficient - like two wins bad.
- I know that this doesn't really prove anything and is really unscientific (as the above bullet points out), but it's just a interesting way of looking at something I've never even really thought about before.
There's probably no way you can read this unless you enter full-screen mode, which is in the upper right hand corner.
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Very interesting...
Thank you very much for looking into this statistic. It’s good to know that the Dookie’s are throwing away so much money into a mediocre program. Good work!
Bogus expense numbers?
Broman, I thought the public school numbers could probably be compared because of what they are required to report. I thought the biggest single difference between them would be the coaches salaries. Since Gary is at about 1.8 M while Williams is at 1.75 M, I figured MD and UNC would be reasonably close. They are not. UNC is about double MD. What is the source of the difference? Salaries for assistant coaches? Travel? Recruiting? It is difficult to see how those expenses total about 1.7 M for MD but are 3.9 M for UNC.
There is no reporting requirement for private schools so we really can’t know what they have included or left out. What is Duke’s 15 M all about? One website had Krzyzewski currently making 2.2 M. If that is not too far off, how could they possibly get to 15 M? Maybe they bought a plane in this recession.
Northern Iowa
I believe the calculation used is simple – Expenses divdided by # of wins. Unless I totally messed that up, Northern Iowa out of the Valley spent only $67,124 for each of its 23 wins, putting it in the #1 – even ahead of my beloved Bluejays. Right?
The expense efficiency ratings were for FBS (D1-A) schools only...
I’m pretty sure Northern Iowa is in the FCS (D1-AA). They were not considered for the rankings.
Northern Iowa
You’d be wrong. They are D-1AA in football, but play D-1A in basketball in the Missouri Valley, tying for the league title and earning the Automatic Bid last year.
They should be considered in the rankings.
Bogus expense numbers
I was commenting on the expense numbers used to make calculations. I was not questioning the methodology. If there is no basis for comparing the expense numbers, how can we compare the expense per win numbers?
Re: expense numbers
No idea how they calculated it. I simply used what was on the other page. I said it was really unscientific, I just found it an interesting comparison.
And yes, Northern Iowa would be #1, but I only included the top 70, because that was the majority of the BCS schools (ACC, Big Ten, Big East, Pac 10, Big 12) with a few others jumbled in. Creighton spent enough to get up there, so they’re included. Completely random, I know, but this was a ton of work as it was and I really didn’t want to go through and handpick schools to include and exclude.
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